Archive for February, 2012

Above you will see the new logo that my high school classmate Dan Therre made for my site that is brighter and flashier than the previous logos, along with slicker-looking link buttons.

More importantly, after not doing a 2011 all-racing schedule page, I did make one for this year, where I included all of this year’s races in a great variety of series (indeed, a greater variety of series than I covered in 2010). These series are: Auto GP, ALMS, ARCA, Blancpain Endurance Series, BTCC, CARS Pro Cup, DTM, ELMS, F1, F2, F2000, British F3, F3 Euroseries, ATS Formel 3 Cup, Italian F3, All-Japan F3, European F3 Open, FIA GT1, FIA GT3, V8 Supercars Development Series, Grand-Am (Rolex and Continental Tire), GP2, GP3, IndyCar, Indy Lights, MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, NASCAR (Camping World Truck, Canadian Tire, Corona, K&N Pro Series, Nationwide, Sprint Cup, Modified, and Southern Modified), NHRA (Funny Car, Motorcycle, Pro Stock, and Top Fuel), SCCA (Trans-Am and World Challenge), Star Mazda, USAC (Midget, Sprint, and Silver Crown), V8 Supercars, V8 Utes, World Endurance Championship, World of Outlaws, WRC, World Series by Renault, and WTCC. I also added some standalone races such as the Dakar Rally, 24 Hours of Nuerburgring, 24 Hours of Dubai, and 12 Hours of Bathurst. Are there any other races or series that anyone thinks should be covered? This is located at http://race-database.com/schedule/schedule.php.

Additionally, if you haven’t seen my many YouTube playlists, I have made playlists for what I believe is every NASCAR Winston/Sprint Cup, CART/Champ Car, and IRL/IndyCar race ever uploaded onto YouTube sorted in order by year, which may be of interest to some. It is helpful to me so that I can provide and maintain YouTube links on each race’s results page. These are located at http://www.youtube.com/user/arenasnow/videos?view=pl.

The next things I am likely to do (though perhaps not immediately) are updating my biography pages and the race notes sections of individual race results (to discuss notable incidents in each race, some of which might not be easily detected by looking at the race results alone). I’m well aware that after Dan Wheldon’s death, his biography was one of the most-observed pages and I don’t believe I updated it since about the time he signed for Panther Racing, which was about three years ago. I may rewrite many of the biographies at some point because I think many of them were actually too long and went into too much detail, a level of detail that I would be unlikely to replicate for less famous drivers or drivers who specialized in less famous series. By writing shorter and hopefully more readable biographies, I should be able to cover a wider variety of drivers and not provide too much detail towards drivers I am more familiar with.

I haven’t added coverage of a new series in a while (since late 2010), and I might add a few series this year, but I’m not sure what to cover next. WRC is probably the most prestigious series but the issue there is that I like to archive entire series results and the results are largely unavailable for this series, especially before the 2000s. USAC Champ Car (IndyCar racing from 1956-1978 plus the subsequent Indy 500s through 1995 and a few assorted other races) is also a strong candidate for the next series I’d include due to its prominence and considering many elite drivers raced there in this period. Although the series was kind of a joke given its overwhelming NASCAR bias, I might include something like IROC simply because I think I could enter the complete archive of races in a week or less. Since my site’s user base skews American, I may violate my initial rules and cover minor-league feeder series like the NASCAR Nationwide Series, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, and Firestone Indy Lights soon, but I’d preferably like to include other major leagues first. NHRA is also another series I’m interested in and although the data from 1997 to present is available on their site, the previous several decades are not. There are also layout considerations here, since a results page modeled after my current results pages wouldn’t exactly work for elimination-style racing. As far as prestige is concerned, series like the WEC (which has a very short history and hence might be considered soon), WTCC, and FIA GT1 may merit being included soon. A1GP and Superleague Formula, two racing series I was considering covering, seemed to be very short-lived and not as significant players on the world racing stage as I thought they might become. What do my users think I should cover next?

Finally, one of my traditional principles was that I included only points races only (thereby excluding races such as the non-championship Formula One events of the ’50s-’70s, the Busch Clash/Bud Shootout and Winston/Sprint All-Star Race, and the CART Marlboro Challenge races at Nazareth). This also meant that I excluded races that were initially scheduled but cancelled before they were completed. In the wake of the deaths of Dan Wheldon and Marco Simoncelli, should I list the incomplete results for those two races or not? I know both of those races had barely started before the tragedies occurred, but considering they were started, maybe they should be listed here. In the grand scheme of things, of course it doesn’t matter…

Your thoughts are welcome, and sorry I haven’t updated this blog in nearly a year and a half.